Trumpism, as pundits have taken to calling the ugly mishmash of white supremacy, misogyny, nationalism and unconstitutional religiosity, took a blow on Tuesday. The election results, particularly in Virginia, provided a glimmer of optimism in the murk of chronic despair.
Despite the breathless surprise expressed on cable television, this was not unexpected. The majority of Americans are not quite mean or ignorant enough to endorse Trump’s crude behavior or mean-spirited nationalism. It was particularly heartening that a transgender woman unseated the self-proclaimed “chief homophobe” in a Virginia race. And a male legislator, who tweeted a sexist joke asking if attendees at the marvelous Women’s March in January would be home in time to make dinner, was unseated by a woman of color, sending him home to enjoy endless home-cooked meals. I hope his partner, if he has one, makes him do the cooking.
But the glimmer of optimism faded pretty quickly in my estimation. While Tuesday portended Democratic gains in 2018, a return to relative sanity, while necessary, is sadly insufficient.
Anticipating a broad rebuke of the Trump era is like knowing you’ll feel better when you are no longer being punched in the face. The inordinate attention directed toward Trumpism has relegated much more important issues to the shadows.
The bellicosity of Trump’s campaign, the aggressive belittling of others that characterizes his presidency, and the dangerous rhetoric that threatens press freedom and human rights, have given rise to fears of fascism. Certainly the jack-booted thugs who populate his ego-fest rallies evoke those fears.
But America will not succumb to fascism. Our institutions and traditions are far too strong for that. The darker aspects of Trump and his disturbed partner Steve Bannon are appealing to only a small fringe group of folks. Others are just holding their noses in the futile hope that Trump actually meant anything he said about improving people’s lives. He didn’t.
No, the risk to America is not fascism. It is free-market capitalism. What has happened in America is not the abrupt erosion of democratic institutions or values. What we are experiencing is the triumph of free-market capitalism over our system of democratic republicanism. Our interests, tastes, values and personalities are twisted by advertising, which is a form of manipulation at least as dangerous as the work of fascist propagandists. The myth of free-market infallibility and the delusion of meritocracy have persuaded tens of millions of Americans to regularly vote against their own interests and incite them to resent their neighbors.
Aided by the wrong-headed decision in Citizens United, big money has an inordinate impact on elections and issue campaigns. Shadowy organizations like the Koch brothers’ American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) spend billions on propaganda. They write legislation that legislators (they bought and paid for) pass without bothering to edit the text. The fossil fuel industry spends millions every night on prime-time ads, masquerading as public service announcements, claiming that fracking and drilling on our national lands are acts of great civic virtue. According to USA Today, Big Pharma will spend $6.4 billion this year to persuade Americans to buy drugs to cure everything from erectile dysfunction to a bad day at the office.
The failure to address climate change will be catastrophic, yet efforts to mitigate or reverse the impact of human behavior are hamstrung by threats of economic loss. Corporations will sacrifice the well-being of the planet in service of their insatiable greed.
The current tax proposal is heavily skewed toward corporations. The explicit promise is that their gains will be passed along to workers and that more capital will mean more jobs. Both are outright lies. Trickle-down economics is a hoax and the country is already awash in capital. But our gullible citizenry has been persuaded by decades of propaganda that an unfettered market will solve their problems.
The repeated efforts to make health care a free-market commodity are just another corporate scheme. We can afford inexpensive care for all of our citizens, but the health care industry has legislators in their well-lined pockets and together they will sacrifice the well-being of millions of children, women and men in service of their insatiable greed.
Our public education system is being decimated by a campaign led by billionaires’ propaganda. They would have you believe education is failing. It is not. They would have you believe free-market competition will improve education. It will not. They will sacrifice one of America’s most important institutions in service of their insatiable greed.
Rejection of Trumpism is a start. But until and unless we recognize that we live in a society, not an economy, our future is bleak. We have to get money out of politics and restore the primacy of democratic republicanism over corporate greed. Fascism can take many forms. Sometimes the uniforms are pinstripes.
Steve Nelson lives in Boulder, Colo., and Sharon. He can be reached at stevehutnelson@gmail.com.